Wednesday, August 12, 2009

We question our culture's attitude towards sex -- but how many of us have thought through the way in which our society views marriage? There's a lot more to question besides easy divorces, argues this piece.

The theology is off (speaking of covenants instead of sacraments), but the way it explores the general expectation that marriage happens when you're in your late 20s, financially stable, and fully emotionally independent makes the piece very much worth reading. A snippet:

"For all the heated talk and contested referendums about defending marriage against attempts to legally redefine it, the church has already ceded plenty of intellectual ground in its marriage-mindedness. Christian practical ethics about marriage—not the ones expounded on in books, but the ones we actually exhibit—have become a nebulous hodgepodge of pragmatic norms and romantic imperatives, few of which resemble anything biblical."